Cooking Baking Eating

Lately our lives have been one adventure after another. Not only have we been dealing with our day to day lives and everything that usually comes with it, but we made a hugely insane (but fantastic) decision to move ourselves out of the Pacific Northwest and back to sunny Southern California!

Seriously.

We made the “decision” to move early in the year, and I say that with quotation marks because we made a decision but I honestly didn’t think it would work out. There have been so many “decisions” that we’ve made over the years but they never panned out. But as I type this blog in warm and sunny California I would say it panned out!

We made it happen, threw all of our belongings into a moving truck and storage container with a hope and a prayer that everything will work out.

It’s been a bit of an adjustment for the both of us since 95% of our belongings are in storage and we are living with a very generous family member. I’m still trying to learn where she keeps everything in the kitchen, and there are so many of my kitchen things I would love to break out but there is either not enough room in the kitchen for my huge amount of kitchen crap, or I can’t find it because its buried in the abyss of the storage unit..

Mostly it’s all buried. Always an adventure. Read more »

Sunday I wrote about my Tuesday Tea Time, and intended to post that on Tuesday, however my blonde was showing and I ended up posting it early.

Silly me.

Now that it’s Tuesday I can finally say it’s Tuesday Tea Time!



Today I am drinking the Sour Apple herbal tea I ordered from Adagio. I’ve gotten this before and I honestly forgot how much I enjoy this stuff. The last time I ordered I only got the sample, and that’s enough for someone to figure out if they like it.
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This past week was a waiting game for me. After spending so much time not buying things for myself and focusing on the nitty gritty of life, I decided to be a wild child and order some new teas from my favorite loose tea company: Adagio.

Granted, they are my favorite since they are the only people I have really ordered tea from online. However, I have yet to be disappointed.

If you remember before, I posted about some samples a few years ago about my very first order from Adagio. I decided I needed to clean out my tea cabinet and found the little sample tins again. Sadly, I used up all the herbal ones and only had the caffeinated ones still. I had to really cut caffeine out of my life and so those are not going to get used.

It’s rather a good thing that I didn’t use them anyways since they were 4 years old! Loose herbal or mixed teas should last about 6 months according to my research, and up to 12 months for good quality pure tea.

They are long past their use by dates! Yuck. I’m sure they would be perfectly safe to consume but who knows.

So I ordered my tea and had to wait all the way to the weekend for it to arrive. I admit to going a little crazy with the ordering, but I was so excited to finally spend money on myself that I just couldn’t resist getting ALL the samples that I’ve been curious about plus larger sizes of the teas I loved from last time. I was so excited when the husband and I went to pick up the mail.

However I was not so excited to see this big rip in the box.



Luckily all of my tea was inside and nothing appeared to be missing or damaged. I wasn’t so sure at first since the inside of the box faintly smelled of fruit, but that could just be the bags themselves or maybe some scent from the warehouse? Everything is perfect and in order. Yay tea!



So here’s what I got:
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I’m giddy to be able to say “last year” and put all of 2013 in the past. It was a rough year and being able to officially put it in the past makes me much happier.

During 2013 I don’t think I really accomplished much other than making copious amounts of caramel corn, drank way too much moonshine, mourned my sad and dead computer, and spent way too much time playing on my new iPhone.

Those darn iPhones are far too addictive.

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Sometimes I shock myself with the random things that I do. They really make me question just how completely awesome I am. I know I’m pretty awesome at cooking, sewing, wielding the camera, and navigating the overall strangeness of life, but there are things that I am NOT awesome at.

Like I am not awesome at keeping myself from doing stupid things. The stupid things that I’m talking about include being so frustrated because I cannot find my car keys and later realize I was holding them in my hand all along, or losing my shoes in the morning (my husband loves that one, its almost a daily occurrence). Even forgetting to take my seatbelt off before getting out of the car and ending up flailing my arms as I’m tangled in my seatbelt while hanging half out of the car.

That was pretty awesome for those watching, I assume. However, as of the other night I have a new “awesomeness” I can add my long list of weirdness.

I set my oven on fire.

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Well, do you count something as a failure if you’ve learned something in the process? The Whole30 (elimination diet) I talked about before actually became a Whole8 instead, mostly because I was feeling sicker and sicker every day when I was doing the diet. Most people start an elimination diet because they’re trying to heal what makes them feel sick, where it just plain old made me sick.

So after a week, I decided I needed to not be so strict and pick one thing at a time to eliminate instead of more than one. The dominant theory between my husband and I is that it was too much of a shock to the system. Oh well. I still think the Whole30 is a great program, I just couldn’t deal with feeling sick any longer.

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I feel like my general goal for starting this blog has kind of gone to the wayside. I started doing this with the intention of learning better ways to make things I love, and also to make them healthier.

I feel like I’ve gotten away from that and haven’t been actually making that effort to truly create a better life and better relationship with food. Right now my relationship with food rather sucks. I’ve had an up and down relationship with food. Sometimes I’m doing really good and treating my body right with good foods, and other times I’m going off the wall and eating anything and everything in front of me.

I’ve gotten away from my healthy lifestyle and I need to make that change. So what am I doing? Elimination Diet aka Whole 30.

I’ve looked into a lot of elimination diets and thought about doing them for quite a while, and they are mostly used to help figure out if there is a food causing whatever health problems you have (in my case skin problems of acne and psoriasis/eczema) but will all the things you have to get rid of its rather terrifying. I’ve told a few people that I’m doing this plan, and I’ve gotten two different responses: “Really!? Yay! Fantastic!” or “You’re doing WHAT? And why the heck are you doing that!?”

Sigh.

Luckily my husband is being very supportive of me and is willing to try eating what I make for this eating plan. I know it’s going to be difficult, mostly for the whole going out part. We love to go out to eat, and eat far too much of it actually, but it’s going to be so difficult to find places that I know will not use all the things that are on the “Not Allowed” list.

So what’s on this dreaded no-no list?

Soy and all soy products
Wheat/Gluten
All other grains (no rice, quinoa, oatmeal, ect)
Dairy (except clarified butter or ghee)
Added sugar or sweeteners of any kind
Alcohol
Legumes
White potatoes
MSG or sulfites

Now what are you going to have for breakfast? No pancakes, toast, home fries, muffins, oatmeal, cereal…? I think this is what stumps most people, but as long as they take time to plan then it doesn’t actually seem all that bad, especially when you stop looking at what you can’t have and look at what you CAN have.

My dear friend Marcy is a nutritionist and she looked over the plan for me with two thumbs up.

So I’m doing it.

Starting tomorrow.

Crap.

I bought myself a new popsicle mold a few weeks ago, and I have to say I’m a bit obsessed. I decided that the little one that makes 4 is just too darn small, so I ordered this bad boy and had a little happy fit at work when it arrived. Not only are the popsicles bigger, but I can make 10 popsicles.

10!

That’s a lot of popsicles.

But in the time that I’ve been using it I’ve noticed that I never seem to quite fill all of the molds. I’m usually off by 2-3 molds, but that works for me since I can make a whole ton of filling and just see how far it gets me.

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Sometimes you just get a craving and you have to have it. The other night I was craving pie. Not just any pie, but blackberry pie ala mode.

Sadly, I was just too darn lazy to go to a restaurant to get some pie, and had no motivation what so ever to start a pie crust. So instead I did the next best thing: cobbler.

After digging through my freezer I found a bag of frozen blackberries hiding in the back. Score. We still didn’t have any ice cream, but that’s easily fixed by sending my loving husband to the store. And he did. Brownie points for that guy. Read more »

Today is a big day for me. I hit a new decade in life.

Today I turn 30.

I am terrified of getting older, of having to actually be an adult. I know I can’t be a Toys R Us kid for the rest of my life, but 30? That’s huge.

Oh boy. Lets see how this goes.